(Hawaii)– University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa Professor Robert Littman has been selected as the 2018 recipient of the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) Martha and Artemis Joukowsky Distinguished Service Award. The institute is considered the nation’s leading archaeological organization with 220,000 members and promotes inquiry and public understanding of the human past.

Littman is a professor in the College of Languages, Linguistics and Literature and has been teaching at UH since 1977. He is a world renowned scholar in Greek history and literature, ancient medicine and archaeology and will receive his award in Boston in January .

“I think it is very good for the University of Hawaiʻi to have national and international exposure,” said Littman. “It is a pleasure to get it but it really represents a lot of hard and selfless work by others in the field.”

Littman directs UH Tell Timai Excavation Project in Egypt

One of the reasons Littman is being recognized by AIA is for his ongoing UH Tell Timai Project, a decade-long excavation in an ancient Egyptian city in the Nile Delta. Littman and colleague Jay Silverstein, a UH Mānoa adjunct professor, have been directing archaeological activities at the Tel Timai site since the project’s inception in 2007.

To date, more than 70 UH Mānoa students have traveled to Egypt to participate in the excavation of Thmouis in Timai El Amdid, Egypt, a flourishing city from 500 B.C. to about 600 A.D. for the Egyptians followed by Greeks and then the Romans.